THE NIGHT IN THE DESERT
At ten o'clock that night the moon had not yet risen. Its glow was on
the eastern sky, however, and at length it appeared, a broken orb with
its waning side lopped from its bulk.
Beth was still in the saddle. She was utterly exhausted; she could
scarcely remain in her seat. For more than an hour Van had plodded
onward without even turning to speak. They had talked intermittently,
and he had told her his name. Far off in the dimness of the desert
level--the floor of a second mighty valley--a lone coyote began his
dismal howling. Beth, on the horse, felt a chill go down her spine.
Van seemed not to hear. The howl was repeated from time to time
intermittently, like the wail of a ghost, forever lost to hope.
When the moon at last shone fairly on the broncho and the girl, Van
cast a glance at her face. He was startled. The young rider looked so
much like Beth--and looked so utterly tired!
Van halted, and so did the pony. The man looked up at his companion.
"You're in no fit condition to go on," he said. "What's the use of our
trying to make it? To camp right here is as good as going on all
night, which don't suit my legs worth a cent."
Beth was wearied almost to collapse. But--to camp out here--all
night!--they two! Aside from the terrors that had crept to her soul at
sound of the distant coyote, this present aspect of the situation was
appalling. Indeed, she began to see that whether they went on or
remained, she must spend the night in this man's company.
She was almost too tired to care how such a thing would appear. He
thought her a man--it had been inescapable--there was nothing she could
do to prevent the course of events. And come what might she must
presently slip from that saddle, in her weakness, faintness, and
hunger, if the penalty were all but life itself.
"I'm--sure I can walk--and let you ride," she said. "I'd like to go
on, but I know I can't sit here any longer."
She tried to dismount by herself--as any man must do. In her stiffness
she practically fell from the saddle, sinking on her side upon the
ground. Only for a second was she prostrate thus at his feet, but her
coat fell back from her kahki vest--and a gleam of the moonlight fell
upon a bright little object, pinned above her heart.
Van beheld it--and knew what it was--his nugget, washed from the
"Laughing Water" claim!
The truth seemed to pour upon him like the waters of an all-engulfing
wave--the overwhelming, wonderful truth that was also almost terrible,
in what it might mean to them both.
There was one thing only the man could do--ignore this fact that he had
discovered and treat her like a man. This he knew instantly. He
turned with a man's indifference to one of his sex and vaulted to
Suvy's back.
"Come on," he said, "if you're anxious to get under cover."
He could trust himself to say no more. He rode ahead.
Beth did her best to follow, and make no complaint. The broncho,
however, was a rapid walker. This she had not realized while Van was
striding on in the lead. She fell behind repeatedly, and Van was
obliged to halt his horse and wait. She began to be lame. It had been
a torture to ride; it was agony to walk.
Van now became strangely urgent. He had never loved her more. His
love had taken on a sacredness, out here in the night, with Beth so
weary and helpless. More than anything he had ever desired in his life
he wished to keep her sacred--spared from such a complication as their
night out here alone might engender.
Yet he saw the first little limp when she began to falter. He was
watching backward constantly, his whole nature eager to protect
her--save her from hurt, from this merciless toil across the desert.
He longed to take her in his arms and carry her thus, securely. He was
torn between the wish to hasten her along, for her own greater ease of
mind, and the impulse to halt this hardship. He knew not what to do.
They had gone much less than a mile when he brought up his pony at her
side.
"Here, Kent," he said, "you walk like a bride-groom going up the aisle.
You'll have to get up here and ride." He dismounted actively.
Beth could have dropped in her tracks for weariness. She was tired to
the marrow of her bones.
"I can't," she answered. "Perhaps--we'd better camp." A hot flush
rushed upward to her very scalp, fortunately, however, unseen.
Van regarded her sternly.
"I've changed my mind. I haven't time to camp out here to-night.
You'll have to ride."
It seemed to Beth that, had it been to save her life, she could
scarcely have climbed to that saddle. To remain on the horse would,
she knew, be far beyond her strength. She continued on her feet only
by the utmost exertion of her will. Someway since Van had found her in
this dreadful place she had lost strength rapidly--perhaps for the
leaning on him. With Van's ultimatum now to confront, she could summon
no nerve or resolution.
Her face paled. "You'd better go on, if you have to be at your claim,"
she said, aware that she could offer no argument, no alternative plan
to his wish for an onward march. "I'm--not used to riding--much. I
can't ride any more tonight."
He knew she told the truth, knew how gladly she would have continued
riding, knew what a plight of collapse she must be approaching to
submit to a thought of remaining here till morning. He could not go
and leave her here. The thought of it aroused him to something like
anger. He realized the necessity of assuming a rougher demeanor.
"Damn it, Kent," he said, "you're no less lost than you were before.
You know I can't go off and leave you. And I want to get ahead."
She only knew she could not ride, come what might.
"You didn't say so, a little while ago," she ventured, half
imploringly. "I'm sorry I'm so nearly dead. If you must go on----"
That cut him to the heart. How could he be a brute?
"I ought to go!" he broke in unguardedly. "I mean I've got to
think--I've got work to do in the morning. Don't you suppose you could
try?"
The moonlight was full on his face. All the laughter she knew so well
had disappeared from his eyes. In its place she saw such a look of
yearning and worry--such a tenderness of love as no woman ever yet saw
and failed to comprehend. She divined in that second that he knew who
she was--she felt it, through all her sense of intuition and the fiber
of her soul. She understood his insistence on the march, the saving
march, straight onward without a halt. She loved him for it. She had
loved him with wild intensity, confessed at last to herself, ever since
the moment he had appeared in the desert to save her.
If a certain reckless abandon to this love rocked her splendid
self-control, it was only because she was so utterly exhausted. Her
judgment was sound, unshaken. Nevertheless, despite judgment and
all--to go on was out of the question. God had flung them out here
together, she thought, for better or for worse. That Van would be the
fine chivalrous gentleman she had felt him to be at the very first
moment of their accidental acquaintance, she felt absolutely assured.
She accepted a certain inevitable fatality in the situation---perhaps
the more readily now that she knew he knew, for she seemed so much more
secure.
His question remained unanswered while she thought of a thousand
things. Could she try to go on?
She shook her head. "What's the use of my riding--perhaps another
mile? You might go on and send a man to guide me in the morning."
What an effort it cost her to make such a harsh suggestion not even Van
could know. A terrible fear possessed her that he might really act
upon her word. To have him stay was bad enough, but to have him go
would be terrible.
"Hell!" he said, keeping up his acting. "You talk like a woman.
Haven't I wasted time enough already without sending someone out here
to-morrow morning? What makes you think you're worth it?" He turned
his back upon her, hung the stirrup of the saddle on the horn, and
began to loosen the cinch.
Like the woman that she was, she enjoyed his roughness, his impudence,
and candor. It meant so much, in such a time as this. After a moment
she asked him:
"What do you mean to do?"
He hauled off the saddle and dropped it to the ground.
"Make up the berths," he answered. "Here's your bedding." He tossed
the blanket down at her feet. It was warm and moist from Suvy's body.
He then uncoiled his long lasso, secured an end around the pony's neck,
and bade him walk away and roll.
The broncho obeyed willingly, as if he understood. Van took up the
saddle, carried it off a bit, and dropped it as before.
Beth still remained there, with the blanket at her feet.
Van addressed her. "Got any matches?"
"No," she said. "I'm afraid----"
"Neither have I," he interrupted. "No fire in the dressing-room.
Good-night. No need to set the alarm clock. I'll wake you bright and
early." Once more he took up his saddle and started off in the
ankle-high brush of the plain.
Beth watched him with many misgivings at her heart.
"Where--where are you going?" she called.
"To bed," he called in response. "Want room to kick around, if I get
restless."
She understood--but it was hard to bear, to be left so alone as this,
in such a place. He went needlessly far, she was sure.
Grateful to him, but alarmed, made weaker again by having thus to make
her couch so far from any protection, she continued to stand there,
watching him depart. He stooped at last, and his pony halted near him,
like a faithful being who must needs keep him always in sight. Even
the pony would have been some company for Beth, but when Van stretched
himself down upon the earth, with the saddle for a pillow, she felt
horribly alone.
There was nothing to do but to make the best of what the fates allowed.
She curled herself down on the chilly sand with the blanket tucked
fairly well around her. But she did not sleep. She was far too tired
and alarmed.
Half an hour later three coyotes began a fearsome serenade. Beth sat
up abruptly, as terrified as if she had been but a child. She endured
it for nearly five minutes, hearing it come closer all the while. Then
she could bear it no more. She rose to her feet, caught up her
blanket, and almost ran towards the pony. More softly then she
approached the place where Van lay full length upon the ground. She
beheld him in the moonlight, apparently sound asleep.
As closely as she dared she crept, and once more made her bed upon the
sand. There, in a child-like sense of security, with her fearless
protector near, she listened in a hazy way to the prowling beasts, now
cruising away to the south, and so profoundly slept.
Van had heard her come. Into his heart snuggled such a warmth and holy
joy as few men are given to feel. He, too, went to sleep, thinking of
his nugget on her breast.